An iPhone app that could change your life

by phil on Thursday Mar 26, 2009 1:33 PM
mainfeed, personal projects

This is the coolest project I've worked on. It's the Creative Whack Pack for the iPhone. It's based on the best-selling deck of cards, the original Creative Whack Pack, which has changed my life in meaningful ways. The product is 64 cards with creativity strategies to stimulate your thinking. Here's the story of how I came to this:

In 1996, I went to a Key Club convention in San Jose, and the president Patrick, held a session with around 200 of us student representatives from our local Key Clubs. He then handed out a deck of cards from the Creative Whack Pack, and told us to all take a single card and pass the deck around. He then told us to use the cards to come up with a strategies to help our local club. Within 10 minutes, my little group was just coming up with all sorts of new ideas. This lit a light bulb in my head. None of us were necessarily "creative" types, but with just one device we could temporarily make ourselves that way.

I quickly saw the potential of this, and when I came back home, I bought a deck of cards from Amazon. Since then I've used the deck of cards at least once a month. Most of the time, I've used them to unblock me when I've been working through a life challenge. Other times, I've used it to come up with new business ideas. And I will say that some of the readings that I've given myself have moved me in directions that have altered my life in meaningful ways.

When I traveled over Winter Break recently, though, I forgot to bring my deck of cards with me. Being at a loss, I tried to search for the cards online and couldn't find them. And so I e-mailed Roger von Oech, the creator of the Whack Pack, and asked him if he had an iPhone app coming up, and if not, that I'd love to help him make one. He replied right away and said that he'd been thinking that very week of looking for an iPhone developer. What followed was a good 3 month working relationship where we iterated over every little detail to make this a great port of the Whack Pack to the iPhone. We did everything we could to take advantage of the medium, playing to its strengths, and I think this app could change your life.

Comments

Tim Geithner said on March 26, 2009 5:03 PM:

What a great idea. Looks like this product could help me figure a true valuation for the toxic assets on the banks' books. Thanks for sharing.

Best wishes!

Philip Dhingra said on March 26, 2009 5:04 PM:

hah!